He opened to Book Two and found this: ‘Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.’ He looked up from the book and out the window, where the curtain was only half drawn; he was conscious of the light, not from the approaching dawn, but from the ambient illumination with which the city was filled.
He considered the words of the wise emperor, but then he thought of Patta, of whom many things could be said, among which was the undeniable fact that he was happy. Yet if ever man had been made who was unconscious of the motions of his own soul, that man was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta.
In no way deterred by the failure of the book to spin up a winning combination, Brunetti opened to Book Eleven. ‘No thief can steal your will.’ This time he closed the book and set it aside. Again, he gave his attention to the light in the window and the statement he had just read: neither provided illumination. Government ministers were arrested with frightening frequency; the head of government himself boasted, in the middle of a deepening financial crisis, that he didn’t have financial worries and had nineteen houses; Parliament was reduced to an open shame. And where were the angry mobs in the piazzas? Who stood up in Parliament to discuss the bold-faced looting of the country? But let a young and virginal girl be killed, and the country went mad; slash a throat and the press was off and running for days. What will was left among the public that had not been destroyed by television and the penetrant vulgarity of the current administration? ‘Oh, yes, a thief can steal your will. And has,’ he heard himself say aloud.
Brunetti, trapped in the mixture of rage and despair that was the only honest emotion left to the citizenry, pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He stayed under the shower for a long time, indulging in the luxury of shaving there without giving a thought to the consumption of water, the energy expended to heat it, nor yet to the fact that he was using a disposable razor. He was tired of taking care of the planet: let it take care of itself for a change.
He went back to the bedroom and dressed in a suit and tie, but then he remembered where it was he and Vianello were going that morning and replaced the suit in the closet and put on a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a heavy woollen jacket. He searched around on the floor of the closet until he found a pair of Topsiders with thick rubber waffle soles. He had little idea of the proper attire for a slaughterhouse, but he knew a suit was not it.
It was seven-thirty before he left the house, stepping out into an early morning crispness that gave promise of clean air and growing warmth. These really were the best days of the year, with the mountains sometimes visible from the window in the kitchen, the nights cool enough to summon a second blanket from the closet.
He walked, stopped to get a newspaper – La Repubblica and not either of the local papers – and then in Ballarin for a coffee and a brioche. The pasticceria was busy, but not yet crowded, so most people could still find a place to stand at the bar. Brunetti took his coffee to the small round table, placed the paper to the left of his cup, and studied the headlines. A woman about his age, with hair the colour of marigolds, set her cup not far from his, studied the same headlines while sipping at her coffee, looked at him, and said, speaking Veneziano, ‘It makes a person sick, doesn’t it?’
Brunetti held up his brioche and tilted it in the equivalent of a shrug. ‘What can we do?’ had come from his lips before he remembered the words of Marcus Aurelius. The thief, it seemed, had stolen his will during the short time since he had left his home. Thus, as if he had intended his first remark as a rhetorical flourish, he looked at her directly and said, ‘Other than to vote, Signora.’
She looked at him as if she had been stopped on the street by one of the patients from Palazzo Boldù, some raving lunatic who would now reveal the Secret of the Ages. Disgust at his own moral cowardice swept Brunetti, forcing him to add, ‘And throw small coins at them if we see them on the street.’
She considered this and, seeming gratified that this man had so quickly come to his senses, set her cup in her saucer and carried it over to place it on the bar. She smiled at him, wished him good day, paid, and left.
At the Questura, he went directly to the officers’ room, but none of the day shift had arrived. In his own office, he checked for new files, but his desk was as he had left it the day before. He used his new computer to check the other newspapers, but they had no further information about the murdered man nor about the progress of the case, nor had they bothered to print the photo that had been sent to them. Interest in the dead man had been supplanted by the news that the decomposing body discovered in a shallow grave near Verona two days before had turned out to be that of a woman who had been missing for three weeks. She was young, and her photo showed her to have been attractive, so her death had blotted out the other.
Vianello’s entrance cut short his reflections. ‘Foa’s assistant’s waiting,’ he said, then by way of explanation, ‘He’s not on till the afternoon. There’s a car at Piazzale Roma.’ Brunetti saw that the Inspector, too, had given some thought to their destination and was wearing a pair of much-laundered jeans, a brown leather jacket, and a pair of shoes that looked as if they were made for walking in rough country.
Brunetti glanced over the surface of his desk, wondering if there was anything he should be taking with him, but he could think of nothing. Cowardly delay: his search was no more than cowardly delay. ‘Right. Let’s go,’ he said and started down towards the boat.
It took them an hour to get to Preganziol, what with the seemingly stationary agglomeration of cars and buses at Piazzale Roma and the dense traffic on the Ponte della Libertà and in the outskirts of Mestre. Traffic didn’t begin to move at a steady pace until they passed under the autostrada and started north on Highway 13.
They passed the entrances to Villa Fürstenberg and Villa Marchesi and then found themselves running parallel to the train tracks. They slowed to go through Mogliano Veneto, and then passed another villa; the name sped by too fast for Brunetti to read it. Their driver looked neither right nor left: the villa could have been a circus tent or an atomic reactor, and still he would not have taken his eyes from the road. They crossed a small stream, passed another villa, and then the driver turned to the right and into a narrow two-lane road, eventually drawing to a stop in front of what looked like an industrial park.
The world in front of them was a world of cement, chain-link fences, anonymous buildings, and moving trucks. The buildings for the most part were naked: unpainted, flat-roofed rectangles with very few windows; each was surrounded by an apron of stained cement, and most of those were surrounded by fences. The only brightness came from the lettering on some of the trucks and an open-sided kiosk where workers stood, drinking coffee and beer.
The driver turned to speak to Brunetti. ‘This is it, sir,’ he said, pointing to a gate in the metal fence around one of the buildings. ‘Here on the left.’ Only then, seeing him full face, did Brunetti notice the smear of a broad, glossy scar that could have been caused only by a burn; it began above his left eye and widened as it ascended until it disappeared, broad as three fingers, under the brim of his hat.
Brunetti opened the door. As soon as he was outside, he heard the noise: a distant growling sound that might have come from New Year’s noisemakers or from the exultation of passionate lovers, or even from a badly played oboe. Brunetti, however, knew what it was, and if he had not, the iron-strong smell would have told him what went on behind those gates.